Apple launched its latest iteration of the MacBook Pro rather quietly, with no media event or even a press release. Instead, they quietly bumped up the specs in their flagship laptops. If you’ve recently bought a MacBook Pro, you’re not missing much. But if you’ve been mulling over a purchase, now might be the time. The improvements are modest, to be sure, but Apple has also brought back an option that we’ve been chomping at the bit to have for quite some time.

Two revolutions are now underway that will change computing forever -- if programmers can figure out how best to take advantage of them. The first is an explosion in the number of cores on a single chip, and the second is such a radical transformation of the microprocessor landscape that the geekerati can’t even agree on what to call it.